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Two young boys encounter a fugitive and form a pact to help him evade the vigilantes that are on his trail and to reunite him with his true love. Two young boys encounter a fugitive and form a pact to help him evade the vigilantes that are on his trail and to reunite him with his true love. Two young boys encounter a fugitive and form a pact to help him evade the vigilantes that are on his trail and to reunite him with his true love.

• Jeff Nichols
• Matthew McConaughey
• Tye Sheridan
• Jacob Lofland
• 361 User reviews
• 391 Critic reviews
• 76 Metascore
• 15 wins & 39 nominations

• Galen's Helper

• Man at Budget Inn
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia Reese Witherspoon had an accident shortly before filming started; her bruises and cuts are real. Instead of covering them with make-up or waiting until she healed more, Jeff Nichols decided to film her like that because it suited the character.
• Goofs Mud says that the same snake antivenom cannot be used twice on the same person. While it is true that repeated use of first-generation antivenoms can cause severe allergic reactions, modern antivenoms can be used repeatedly safely.

Mud : She is like a dream you don't want to wake up from.

• Crazy credits Everest Entertainment donates a portion of its profits from each film to charity. By watching an Everest film you have made a difference. We thank you.
• Connections Featured in Maltin on Movies: Pain & Gain (2013)
• Soundtracks Everything You Need Written by Ben Nichols Performed by Lucero Courtesy of Empty Road Music

User reviews 361

• Feb 14, 2015
• How long is Mud? Powered by Alexa
• May 10, 2013 (United States)
• United States
• Official Facebook
• Official site
• Kẻ Chạy Trốn
• Mississippi River, Eudora, Arkansas, USA (the island)
• Lionsgate Films
• Everest Entertainment
• Brace Cove Productions
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $10,000,000 (estimated)
• $21,590,086
• Apr 28, 2013
• $32,613,173

Technical specs

• Runtime 2 hours 10 minutes
• Dolby Digital

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Review: ‘Mud’ is a triumph for Matthew McConaughey, Jeff Nichols

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“Do you love her?”

Wistful and hoping for a yes, the rough-hewn Arkansas boy who asks that question can’t quite hold the gaze of the stranger, but his voice is insistent.

The question comes early in “Mud” and will haunt the 14-year-old and the movie until the final frame.

The answer — to what loving means, to how urgent it feels the first time, to how easily it can slip away, like the Mississippi River that runs through this tale — is wily and willful.

MOVIE REVIEWS: Latest reviews from The Times

The movie itself, filled with miscreants, mysteries, a scandalous hero named Mud and a couple of boys as headstrong as Huck Finn, is one of the most creatively rich and emotionally rewarding movies to come along this year.

The boy named Ellis, portrayed by young Tye Sheridan, who first turned up in Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life,” will ask about love many times over the course of the film. He will press his father, Senior (Ray McKinnon), his mother, Mary Lee (Sarah Paulson), a bad-luck beauty named Juniper (Reese Witherspoon), his first girlfriend May Pearl (Bonnie Sturdivant), even the local recluse Tom Blankenship (Sam Shepard). But Ellis will keep coming back to that stranger — Mud (Matthew McConaughey) — who seems to know more than most about life and loving.

Mud is a romantic on the run that Ellis and his best friend, Neckbone (Jacob Lofland), stumble across when they go to investigate a boat lodged high in a tree by some angry, earlier storm. It’s on a spit of sand that passes for an island in the middle of the Mississippi, not too far from one of the houseboat shanties that hug the river’s edge. Passed down from one generation to the next, it’s where Ellis has grown up and tells us everything we need to know about how precarious things are for him.

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The boys’ investigation of the boat leads to the discovery of the man. Ellis is curious, Neckbone is wary. Bit by bit their prodding pulls the story out of Mud.

His murder of a Texas man in a quarrel over Juniper is what has him hiding. That death has dogged him like the bounty hunters paid for by the man’s father (Joe Don Baker) and the lawmen who are drawing closer. He’s hungry. He needs to get a letter to Juniper. Will they help?

Much turns on the clandestine adventure that follows, the boys’ excitement at being a part of it doing much to buoy the film. Besides, if Ellis believes anything, it is that Mud loves Juniper and Ellis is clearly moved by love.

With matted hair, a cracked front tooth, sun-browned skin and blues eyes sparking mischief, McConaughey beautifully articulates with his honeyed drawl the very essence of a grizzled, determined romantic. It is the best work of the actor’s career, though virtually everyone in the film turns in sensitively drawn performances, particularly the boys.

If you don’t know the name Jeff Nichols — if the writer-director’s singular voice, fierce and fearful in 2011’s “Take Shelter,” somehow eluded your notice — make note of it now. “Mud” should securely anchor this rising tide as a distinctive talent to remember.

PHOTOS: Movies Sneaks 2013

Nichols is made in America, a storyteller in the tradition of Mark Twain, uncanny in the way he understands human nature, inventive in spinning that into a movie. There is an ease with which Nichols pokes around in people’s lives, unearthing small truths in authentic ways. In “Mud,” it feels as if he’s caught a small slice of backcountry soul like a firefly in a jar.

For such a spare film, “Mud” is dense with details. Ellis’ father, Senior, peddles his daily catch door to door, his marriage is disintegrating, and he doesn’t understand why. It’s all sketched out in a few scenes, sometimes just shadows in the next room and tense exchanges that Ellis overhears.

Neckbone helps out his uncle Galen (a mellow Michael Shannon rather than his apocalyptical worrier of “Take Shelter”). Galen spends a good part of his days under water, scouring the river channels for oysters. He wears a wet suit — all the time — and when he’s working he adds what looks to be the top half of some old deep-sea diving gear he picked up at a Jules Verne scrap sale.

But like everything else about “Mud,” the diving gear, the broken-down houseboats, the weathered skiff the boys use to navigate the Mississippi, seem specific to the moment. Nichols takes care not to repeat himself, though he does hold his friends close — Shannon’s been in all three of his films, and director of photography Adam Stone and others have helped in creating a recognizable style for each one.

MORE: Latest film reviews from The Times

Ellis and Neckbone are soon spending their days scavenging parts to help Mud ready the boat for the great escape and ferrying notes to Juniper, a long-legged mess in cutoffs. Witherspoon gives her character a lazy languor that is seductive in the Mississippi heat. Whether nursing a beer or tossing that long blond mane, it’s easy to imagine men falling for her.

Ellis is trying his hand at romance too, with a younger version of Juniper in May Pearl. His introduction is a swift upper cut to the chin of a rival who’s bothering her. All the while, the bounty hunters are gathering. State troopers are closing roads. Tom Blankenship, who’s got a long history and limited patience with Mud, gets involved. And Juniper remains as much of an enigma as love itself.

As Nichols stirs things up, everything that Ellis has been aching to understand will get tested. Each of the characters we’ve met along the way will be tried and found worthy, or not. Lives are in jeopardy, and there is a snake pit you will never forget. Though nothing is guaranteed, in Nichols’ sure hands you know it will be an exceptionally fine ending when it finally comes along.

MPAA rating: PG-13 for some violence, sexual reference, language, thematic elements and smoking

Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes

Playing: In general release

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“Mudbound” is all about perception. How it can foster empathy and engender contempt, sometimes in the same person. How it can cause one man to look at his land with life-affirming pride and another man to see that same plot as the kiss of death. How an act of wartime courage involving a red-tailed plane and a dark-skinned pilot can forever alter one’s opinion of a different race. And how a society can impose unfair, harmful and absurd restrictions on an entire group simply because those people are seen as inferior by the powers that be. The film invites us to observe its characters, to hear their inner voices, to see what they see and to challenge our own preconceived notions about race and gender.

This is a period piece that evokes the grand family epics of old Hollywood, most specifically George Stevens ’ 1956 film “Giant.” Like George Stevens’ Oscar winner, “Mudbound” is based on a novel and concerns itself with two families living uneasily on the same land. Director Dee Rees masterfully executes her character study, filling the frame with visuals as big and powerful as the emotions she draws from her superb cast. This is melodrama of the highest order, which is a compliment, for melodrama is not a bad thing. It is part of some of the greatest works of art, and in the right hands, it can elicit an ennui-shattering response from the audience.

We will follow two families, the Jacksons, who are Black, and the McAllans, who are White. The McAllan patriarch, Henry ( Jason Clarke ) is forced to interact with the Jacksons after he is suckered into a deal to buy land that the seller does not legally own. Henry’s embarrassment is amplified by the taunting rants of his racist father Pappy ( Jonathan Banks ) and the notion that he has to move into an area designated for a lower class of Whites than he believes himself to be. Henry is constantly reminded of his downgraded stature by the repeated appearances of Vera Atwood ( Lucy Faust ), a struggling, poor White woman whom he deludes himself into thinking is below his station. Vera is Henry’s ghost of Christmas Future, a reminder that he is one mistake away from her desperate existence. For these reasons, Henry despises the land where he resides.

By comparison, pastor Hap Jackson ( Rob Morgan ) looks at his little plot of land as a gift from God, a blessing that actually elevates his stature from that of his ancestors who couldn’t own land at all. It may be a harsh, at times unforgiving piece of Earth, but he has some form of ownership, no matter how tenuous. Even though Henry has commandeered it mostly for himself, leaving Hap to sharecrop it for diminishing returns, Hap still finds joy, solace and meaning in his farm work. As a Black man in post-WWII America, Hap has become accustomed to making due with even the smallest scraps of good fortune, no matter how infuriating they may seem. Hap is an experienced veteran of the war with Jim Crow; he has bent his anger into a strong, almost impenetrable suit of stoic armor whose weak spots are known only by his loving wife, Florence ( Mary J. Blige ).

Henry also has a wife, Laura ( Carey Mulligan ). Through her story, we first become aware that “Mudbound” presents its characters in parallel sets of two. ( Rachel Morrison ’s cinematography also works in this fashion—notice how each family’s house is lit.) Laura’s partner in this arrangement is Florence, another mother who, like Laura, has the socially accepted role of subservience to her man. Both Florence and Laura buck this trend by disobeying their husbands. They also share a moment of grief that bonds them as only two mothers can bond. As the elder of the two, Florence exhibits a maternal instinct toward Laura.

Laura also gets the first of the film’s internal monologues, moments of voiceover that Rees wrote with Virgil Williams in the adaptation of Hillary Jordan ’s novel. Most of the characters have soliloquys that allow us a temporarily omniscient point of view. They provide invaluable information in a fashion that is at times achingly poetic yet completely natural. Florence’s words are especially powerful, rendered by Blige in an excellent performance that mixes the stoicism of Gloria Foster in “Nothing But a Man” with the mischievous twinkle that occasionally popped into a young Cicely Tyson's eye when her characters thought nobody was looking.

Florence and the rest of Hap’s family will be called upon several times to assist the McAllans. Henry’s demands are always delivered in a manner that on the surface sounds like a polite request, yet his tone of voice always stresses that saying no to a White man is not an option. Clarke delivers these lines in squirm-inducing fashion, though the level of discomfort depends on your perception—you may not feel it at all. And though it would appear that Henry has some regard for his counterpart, it becomes clear that he views Hap as too inferior to earn any empathy. Still, “Mudbound” doesn’t treat him as a standard-issue villain; his inner monologues and his interactions with Laura give him a complexity that allows us to understand his actions.

Part of that understanding comes from observing Pappy, a drunk who raised his sons to capitalize on the best White supremacy and privilege have to offer. Pappy has no internal monologues because he’s all surface. His inner voice would sound as racist, corrupt and disgusting as the things everyone hears him say out loud. Banks makes him more than just a one-note character; he’s genuinely menacing and scary enough to dissuade Henry from any sort of racial growth. Henry is bound to his father by guilt, taking him in even when Laura would rather have him burn in Hell, but Henry’s brother Jamie ( Garrett Hedlund ) manages to escape long enough to have an unexpected change of heart as far as Black people are concerned. Unfortunately for Jamie, his escape was World War II.

Florence’s son, Ronsel ( Jason Mitchell ) also served in World War II, battling the Germans and becoming the lover of a German woman he met overseas. He returns to a country that not only refuses to thank him for his service, but also expects him to return to second-class citizenry once he’s back on U.S. soil. The fact that Ronsel is treated better in the enemy country than his own is not lost on us. It will be underlined twice in the film’s bittersweet ending. Ronsel’s scenes with the White townsfolk upon his return are an unsubtle reminder that the America we’re seeing in this film is the one that certain voters want to bring back into existence.

Jamie and Ronsel bond over their shared war experiences, though initially, Ronsel is skeptical and worried about Jamie’s intentions. Jamie tells him that a Tuskegee Airman saved his ass in a dogfight, and that changed his perspective on race. Their friendship is anchored by war stories and booze, of which Jamie drinks too much to drown out symptoms of his PTSD. Nobody understands this the way Ronsel does, but their relationship immediately casts a sense of dread over the film. This progressive partnership is a dangerous one, because Jamie’s a loose cannon and Ronsel is unwilling to go back to racist rules now that he’s had a taste of freedom. So when “Mudbound” becomes terrifyingly violent, we have been prepped for it. Rees handles this, and the subsequent vengeance that follows, with amazing restraint, keeping it from becoming exploitative without diminishing any of its shock value.

Though “Mudbound” presents most of its story and its characters in parallels of two, Ronsel is the one character who shares traits with other characters. Like Florence, he has both a charitable and a stubborn streak, which is evidenced in a wonderful scene where he buys her a bar of chocolate. When Florence intends to break it into pieces and give it to her other kids, Ronsel demands that she keep the entire thing for herself. Have a taste of your own freedom, just as I had for myself in the service, he seems to say to her. It’s a well-played small moment in a movie filled with them.

While the entire cast is superb, “Mudbound” belongs to Blige, Mitchell and Hedlund. Hedlund’s roguish performance is a loose, sexy throwback to Errol Flynn and James Dean —he would have been right at home in front of George Stevens’ camera or underscored by Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Blige is a revelation. And Mitchell deservingly earns the film’s last internal monologue, a quiet, bittersweet and moving meditation on choosing love over hate that proves that Ronsel is the film’s true hero.

I don’t know what Roger would have thought of “Mudbound." But I do know that it supports his thesis that movies are machines that generate empathy. I believe that viewers of different races will find different entry points into the film, but everyone will come out at the end with their viewpoints challenged and perhaps enriched. Rees and company have crafted an unforgettable plea for empathy and justice. This is not an easy film, but it’s an essential one. 

Odie Henderson

Odie "Odienator" Henderson has spent over 33 years working in Information Technology. He runs the blogs Big Media Vandalism and Tales of Odienary Madness. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire  here .

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Film Credits

Mudbound (2017)

134 minutes

Carey Mulligan as Laura McAllan

Jason Clarke as Henry McAllan

Jason Mitchell as Ronsel Jackson

Garrett Hedlund as Jamie McAllan

Mary J. Blige as Florence Jackson

Rob Morgan as Hap Jackson

Jonathan Banks as Pappy McAllan

Kerry Cahill as Rose Tricklebank

Dylan Arnold as Carl Atwood

Lucy Faust as Vera Atwood

Writer (novel)

• Hillary Jordan
• Virgil Williams

Cinematographer

• Rachel Morrison
• Mako Kamitsuna

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Cannes 2012: Mud – review

Screening right at the end of the festival, Jeff Nichols's film Mud made an urgent late bid for the Palme d'Or. An atmospheric thriller and coming-of-age tale set on a slow bend in the Mississippi river, Mud has the look and feel of an American indie classic. It is a surefire best picture nominee at next year's Oscars and likely to win some kind of award at Cannes, receiving the warmest applause of the festival at its morning press screening.

Mud takes its name from its lead character, played by Matthew McConaughey, delivering the best performance of his career (and his second at the festival, after The Paperboy ) as a fugitive holed up on an island in the Mississippi after murdering a rival for his lover Juniper ( Reese Witherspoon ). Mud is wanted by the police and bounty hunters hired by the murdered man's family. He is discovered, however, by two 14-year-old boys, Ellis and Neckbone, who live in houseboats along one of the river's swampy tributaries. They fall under Mud's charismatic spell and are talked into helping him rebuild an old motor boat stranded in a treetop – dumped there, one assumes, years before by a flood or a tornado.

The boys are beautifully played by Tye Sheridan (who starred as one of Brad Pitt's sons in last year's Palme d'Or winner, The Tree of Life ) and Jacob Lofland. The teenagers' thrill and adventure in secretly aiding Mud gives the film a Huckleberry Finn-ish flavour that blends with something akin to Rob Reiner's 1986 classic Stand By Me and Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter . For such an American film, there are also clear echoes of British classics such as Great Expectations and Whistle Down the Wind .

As the net tightens around Mud, Ellis also becomes a go-between, ferrying messages to Juniper as she takes shelter in a motel. Meanwhile, Ellis is also developing a crush on an older girl from his high school, heading for some harsh lessons about the nature of romance.

Writer-director Nichols, working with cinematographer Adam Stone, succeeds in capturing the life and the geography of his locale, its beauty and its dangers, as venomous snakes crawl in the swirling, brown water and local divers fish for oysters and crabs in their own nets. Mud , which also stars Sam Shepard and Michael Shannon , is a very fine film about innocence, father figures and love, a work that manages to be thrilling, unsentimental and emotionally rewarding. This is, sadly, an all too rare combination in so many films, particularly the other American ones that showed in this year's Cannes competition, making Mud all the more worth the wait.

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• Matthew McConaughey

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Directed by Jeff Nichols

Running from his past. Hiding from the law. Only one way out.

Two boys find a fugitive hiding out on an island in the Mississippi River and form a pact to help him reunite with his lover and escape.

Matthew McConaughey Reese Witherspoon Tye Sheridan Jacob Lofland Sam Shepard Ray McKinnon Sarah Paulson Michael Shannon Joe Don Baker Paul Sparks Bonnie Sturdivant Stuart Greer John Ward Jr. Kristy Barrington Johnny Cheek Kenneth Hill Michael Abbott Jr. Earnest McCoy Allie Wade Douglas Ligon Matt Newcomb Mary Alice Jones Tate Smalley Jimmy Dinwiddie Ryan Jacks Richard Ledbetter

Director Director

Jeff Nichols

Producers Producers

Lisa Maria Falcone Aaron Ryder Sarah Green Morgan Pollitt

Writer Writer

Casting casting.

Francine Maisler

Editor Editor

Julie Monroe

Cinematography Cinematography

Assistant directors asst. directors.

Cas Donovan Hope Garrison

Executive Producers Exec. Producers

Glen Basner Gareth Smith Tom Heller Michael Flynn Dan Glass

Production Design Production Design

Richard A. Wright

Art Direction Art Direction

Elliott Glick

Set Decoration Set Decoration

Beauchamp Fontaine

Stunts Stunts

Danny Wynands Mickey Giacomazzi

Composer Composer

David Wingo

Sound Sound

Jeremy Bowker Shayna Brown Ethan Andrus Lyman Hardy Will Files Brandon Proctor

Costume Design Costume Design

Kari Perkins

Makeup Makeup

Clinton Wayne Carla Brenholtz Robin Fredriksz

Everest Entertainment FilmNation Entertainment Brace Cove Productions

Releases by Date

26 may 2012, theatrical limited, 26 apr 2013, 01 may 2013, 03 may 2013, 10 may 2013, 17 may 2013, 31 may 2013, 13 jun 2013, 18 jul 2013, 15 aug 2013, 30 aug 2013, 24 oct 2013, 01 nov 2013, 15 nov 2013, 21 nov 2013, 13 may 2014, 28 aug 2014, 06 aug 2013, 15 oct 2013, 26 nov 2013, 28 sep 2015, releases by country.

• Theatrical M
• Theatrical 14
• Theatrical 11
• Premiere U Cannes Film Festival
• Theatrical U
• Theatrical 12
• Theatrical Κ-12
• Physical DVD, Blu-ray
• Theatrical IIA
• Theatrical 12A
• Theatrical T

Netherlands

• Physical 12 DVD
• TV 12 RTL 8
• Theatrical od 15 lat
• Theatrical M/12
• Theatrical limited PG-13
• Theatrical PG-13
• Physical PG-13

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Popular reviews

Review by Mary Conti ★★★★ 12

Instead of talking about the story and script of Mud (barring some minor issues, it's damn good), or the acting (The Matthew McConaughey renaissance proves to be one of the best comebacks of recent memory), I'd like to focus on the thing that I found made Mud so very special: Texture

What do I mean when I say "texture"? Well, you ever watch a movie, and you feel it? Almost like you're actually in it? That's what I call "texture". The more you can feel a movie, the more authentic it feels, and the more authentic it feels, the better invested you are in it.

Authenticity is important. Even if we're watching a Science Fiction film, as long as the…

Review by Peaceful Stoner ★★★★★ 32

Jeff Nichols’ Mud is a beautiful coming of age film. Not only is it beautiful but also, compelling, thrilling, heartily emotional and a well-rounded film.

Nichols takes ample time, to sculpt each character in the film making them well fleshed out. This provided for an incredibly rewarding watch with a tremendous sense of feeling and affinity to the characters. No one in this film seemed like an additional baggage or being shoe horned into the story to take it forward. Everyone has a part to play, an important part at that too. Never did the 2 hour long film seemed overdrawn. It took its time sinking in every speckle of beauty in the beautiful southern setting of the Arkansas backwaters,…

Review by Lucy ★★ 3

Review by George Clark ★★★½

Mud is a 2012 coming of age drama film written and directed by Jeff Nichols and starring Matthew McConaughey, Tye Sheridan, Jacob Lofland, Sam Shepard, and Reese Witherspoon. On a $10 million budget, Mud grossed $32.60 million worldwide and has a certified fresh score of 97% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Two young boys (Tye and Jacob) encounter a fugitive and form a pact to help him evade the vigilantes that are on his trail and to reunite him with his love. Mud is a great teenage adventure movie with an intriguing plot that draws you further into the movie. Its one of the most original storylines I've ever seen, and that adds to the enjoyment of this film as its unlike…

Review by lauren ★★★ 2

not enough michael shannon

Review by DirkH ★★★★ 14

One of my favourite authors is Charles Dickens. He writes in a language you can almost taste, language that begs to be uttered and to roll off your tongue. It comes to life because of the way he chooses to express himself. Jeff Nichol's cinematic voice and his latest creation Mud have those exact same qualities.

Nichols has created an absolutely gorgeous adventure story and coming of age tale that immerses its audience in an almost mystical piece of America, filled with interesting characters and made tactile by stunning cinematography.

I guess I'm almost hardwired to like this film as I always love this type of story. What makes Mud stand out head and shoulders above most of them is…

Review by Sean Cordy ★★★★ 8

I re-watched Mud tonight to see if it could live up to my previous viewing. Much like The Place Beyond the Pines , it does add up but it actually improved. TPBTP had one of the greatest acts of the century but faltered after its first 40 minutes. Jeff Nichols’s Mud , however, doesn’t ever really falter at all – consistently great cinema.

What my re-watch showed me, was that it gets the little things right to amplify the big picture of it all. From Mud telling Neckbone that he’ll teach him something his daddy never did (which segways to a small side story of Neckbone being raised by his uncle) to Mud’s animalistic traits such as leaving his mark on the…

Review by Rafael "Parker!!" Jovine ★★★½ 7

One of the most A24 movies not to be distributed by the company, the film follows two young boys who after going for a boat drive stumble upon a hanging boat in a tree at a small island who belongs to a mysterious yet intriguing man aka the titular character, Mud.

The greatest asset of this movie hands down has to be the way how Jeff Nichols translates the classic narrative features and tone of Mark Twain (especially Tom Sawyer) and translates into this sorta atemporal slow burn of a comedy-of-age with a few elements of thriller throw in the mix. Performances by everyone are pretty great, especially by Tye Sheridan on his best role yet who has to much…

Review by Scott Tobias ★★★½ 4

It's my belief that if a film can successfully evoke its setting, most of the battle is won, and Jeff Nichols' latest is firmly swamped in the Deep Southernness of his Shotgun Stories —as seen as part modern-day Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn yarn and part coming-of-age story. The plotting feels rigged in the final third—among other things, it features a deus ex snakina —but the relationship between two boys and a stranded rogue is fascinating and surprisingly credible, and the performances are terrific, with McConaughey's dangerous charisma on full display once more.

Review by Gui ★★★★ 4

Nichols strikes again with a moving story as much about childhood as about adulthood. With discreet and beautiful camerawork, it unfolds with the meeting of two young boys and a fugitive from the law. At first everything is in its place: our eyes, nature and an interesting and very original story. But soon the plot takes over, and while the screenplay utters some of the most interesting lines of the year, the excessive action undermines the director's great sense of beauty, character and place. Nevertheless, subtle and pervasive performances drive us through these characters' lives with much truth and wisdom. Its brave and adventurous spirit is slightly damaged by the end, but to call Mud a stream of life and universal subjects is to break its imperfectly beautiful world.

Review by Justin Peterson ★★★★½ 2

Sometimes understanding the nature of love can be as clear as Mud.

"I like you two boys. You remind me of... me."

In this story, two young southern boys befriend a man on the run played by Matthew McConaughey, and learn some valuable life lessons while helping him fix up an escape boat. The film beautifully captures the perspective our teenaged main character named Ellis played by Tye Sheridan has on love. A viewpoint I also remember having at his age. Ellis has the simple perspective that if two people are in love, then they will stay together and get married. But as the story goes along he comes to see first hand how complicated life and love can really…

Review by ethxn🏴‍☠️ ★★★★★ 3

“I like you two boys. You remind me of... me.”

One of the coolest damn things I could imagine finding as a kid, would be a boat in the middle of the woods. A nice boat, but with a catch, it was stuck in a tree & some drifter was living in it.

Matthew McConaughey is one of my favorite actors and has been since I saw The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) . As a kid I always looked for familiarity in my favorite films, McConaughey acts really similar to my own father, from his mannerisms & the way he speaks and especially his role in this film, as well as in Interstellar (2014) which falls in that same bracket. McConaughey is…

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Written and directed by Jeff Nichols, Mud is a Drama starring Matthew McConaughey. The plot sees two teenagers stumble upon a fugitive hiding out on a small secluded island and agree to help him evade capture.

Two young boys encounter a fugitive and form a pact to help him evade the vigilantes that are on his trail and to reunite him with his true love.

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There are 161 reviews of Mud currently aggregated on Rotten Tomatoes. Of those, 98% are positive, meaning only 3 critics saw the same movie I did. Yes, writer/director Jeff Nichols made a purty movie with a strong cast and an interesting little allegorical fable. But do you know what the moral of that fable is? Love sucks because women are whores. I promise you, if you walk through the logic of what is shown, you can absolutely positively not come to any other conclusion. It’s been out for a while now and is on video, so this is going to be heavily spoiler-laden. Gird your loins, spoiler-phobes.

Two 14-year-old boys stumble on a boat that’s up in a tree. This is unusual, even in podunk, McNowhereSwampland where they live. They find a homeless, chipped-tooth, shirtless dude living in said boat and think “we should be that guy’s friend.” Let’s excuse the logic there because it has little to do with the problems at hand. The boat’s resident is Mud (Matthew McConaughey), and he’s there for love.

You see, he loves Juniper (Reese Witherspoon) so much. He always has. So every time they split up and she runs after another man who is terrible for her, he has to save her so they can be together. This time, he kinda sorta killed the guy who she was with because he was abusive to her. I admit, as far as murder justifications go in fiction, I tend to accept male abusers finding themselves on the savage end of cinematic justice. So the kids agree to help Mud get his boat working so he can escape with Juniper from the bad men and the lawmen coming after them.

And here’s where things go wonky. There are three romantic relationships in the movie: (1) Mud and Juniper, (2) Senior (Ray McKinnon) and Mary Lee (Sarah Paulson) and Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and May Pearl (Bonnie Sturdivant). In the first relationship, Mud truly loves Juniper but she keeps leaving him for other men, because she’s a dumb whore. In the second relationship, which involves Ellis’ parents, Mary Lee is leaving Senior and taking the home he’s worked so hard for, because women are dumb whores. In the third relationship, Ellis thinks he’s in love and boyfriend/girlfriend with the older May Pearl after he saves her from a jerk hitting on her. Only then he finds her neckin’ with another dude. Why? I hope you guessed it.

So let’s say I’m wrong in reading into these scenarios, even though there is literally no way that’s the case. There’s a minor character in the film, Galen, who is there to basically deliver one monologue. It’s about how “Help Me Rhonda” is about a dude who is heartbroken and then is asking another chick to bang him to get revenge. He tells the teenage boy, “that’s what you gotta do” in somewhat graphic detail.

The song that plays over the triumphant shot of Mud escaping? “Help Me Rhonda.”

Don’t worry, world, Mud’s gonna totally lay the pipe to a new chick and that will show Juniper what’s what! There isn’t a world, no possible measure of interpretation in which this misogynistic theme isn’t the only one a person can take home. Not one single female character is portrayed as anything other than a combination of helpless, stupid, trashy and disloyal. Mud killed a guy “to protect his ex” but she’s seen as the villain because she doesn’t love him? I tend to not prefer fugitive murderers either.

What really pisses me off, I mean REALLY pisses me off, isn’t the stupid, gutless, cowardice of trying to suggest to audiences that men are loyal creatures of honor and women are untrustworthy trollops. No, that’s been pretty much done by various different “artists” since cavemen drew a cavewoman on a cavewall and called her a caveslut. No, what really sucks is that people have praised the crap out of this movie. Some have gone so far as to call for Oscars and to refer to the film as a modern “fairy tale.” Sure! If what you use as a benchmark for fairy tales are the embedded conduct codes that used to be repeated to little girls to make them behave in certain ways. But this ain’t the “magically tingly” kind of fairy tales. It’s the “fundamentally flawed indication of where a culture is at” kind of fairy tale.

Who cares if the performances were good or the movie looked pretty? The song that they leave you with calls back to an instruction to have sexual relations with any woman you see after a woman hurts you. Screw. All. Of. That.

There are some brilliant, sophisticated authors out there doing feminist criticism, women like Caroline Criado-Perez and Lindy West. And I would PAY THEM to hear their thoughts on this offensive, grotesque lesson in sexism shaped like a movie.

Grade = F- (yes, F-, deal with it)

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Mad Max Movies Ranked by Tomatometer

The original Mad Max , perennially set just a few years from right now, starred Mel Gibson as Max Rockatansky, an Australian officer patrolling a society in rapid decline from pollution and dwindling natural resources. Director George Miller keeps the exact details behind the dystopia in the margins, using the encroaching apocalypse as backdrop for high-flying action stunts and vehicular mayhem. Mad Max first released in 1979, deeply embedded in the Ozploitation era, when the country was pumping out grindhouse-allied movies like Wake in Fright , BMX Bandits , Dead End Drive-In , and The Cars That Ate Paris .

Miller and Gibson re-teamed for two sequels: 1981’s Mad Max 2 aka The Road Warrior , and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome in 1985. Civilization has completely collapsed by the start of the first sequel, with Max turned taciturn survivalist as he prowls through barbaric communities that have sprouted across the wastelands. The leather scavenger chic of the sequels has influenced the look of just about ever desert post-apocalypse setting ever since. Though Miller considers the movies standalone stories, essentially as myths of a wanderer told over oil barrel camp fires, they easily form a trilogy with continuity across Max’s clothing, car, and obviously the actor portraying him.

While Beyond Thunderdome has its detractors for the relative sidelining of Max in favor a bunch of moppets and Tina Turner, it also had to follow up on Road Warrior , considered among the best action films ever made.

2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road was in development for decades, which gave Miller and his collaborators ample time to forge lore, worldbuilding, and deep backstories for Max, warlord Immortan Joe, his rogue lieutenant Furiosa, and War Boy underling Nux. Tom Hardy takes on the Max mantle, with Charlize Theron as Furiosa. Immortan Joe is played by Hugh Keays-Byrne, who was also the villain Toecutter in the first movie.

To avoid contradictions while reinforcing the conceptual mythmaking of Max’s world, Fury Road is part of a separate timeline. The events of the original trilogy have still occurred, but details are changed wherever the new story dictates it. Miller was involved with a 2015 four-issue comic book series that reveals Immortan Joe’s rise to power, Nux’s upbringing, Furiosa’s motives for rebelling, and how Max got his Interceptor car back between Thunderdome and Fury Road . (The open-world Mad Max video game is its own continuity.)

The protracted development of Fury Road was a cakewalk compared to the actual filming, which included flooded sets, long sun-scorched days in Namibia, and feuding lead actors. (The nightmarish shoot is all documented in the book Blood, Sweat & Chrome by Kyle Buchanan.) The result: A groundbreaking assault on the senses and pure action cinema with six Oscar wins, plus nominations for Best Picture and Best Director.

With Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga , mastermind Miller is pulling on the the straightest, strongest thread between films, as the 2024 film is explicitly set 15 years before Fury Road , with Anya Taylor-Joy sliding in.

Now, we’re ranking all the Mad Max movies by Tomatometer!

Mad Max (1979) 90%

Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981) 93%

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985) 79%

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) 97%

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) 90%

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